In automatic transmissions it is known that in the context of an emergency function, shifting elements are acted upon hydraulically by means of valves, in order to engage in the automatic transmission a fail-safe gear by means of which the vehicle can be operated safely, for example until the fault in the automatic transmission has been eliminated. It has been shown that before a gearshift or gear engagement called for by the driver, i.e. before a condition change of the shifting elements involved for engaging the gear from a non frictionally locked to a frictionally locked state, it is important to know whether any functional fault is present in the system, for example caused by sticking of the valve responsible for obtaining the fail-safe gear. If there is an unrecognized functional fault that relates to the hydraulic fail-safe gear, then the engagement of further shifting elements can result in undesired redundancy of a gearset or in blocking of the automatic transmission.